JOHN CABOT UNIVERSITY
AH 273-1
Introduction to the History of Photography
Fall 2019
Instructor: Dr. Sarah Linford
[email protected]
Hours/place: MW 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM (note makeup Fridays)
Classroom: tbd
TOTAL NO. OF CONTACT HOURS: 45
CREDITS: 3
PREREQUISITES: none
OFFICE HOURS:
Wednesday after class and/or by appointment.
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course examines the emergence of photographic traditions and practices within the context of the cultural and artistic forces that shaped the medium’s evolution. This is an introduction to photography as both a historical and contemporary form of art and communication. While essential to the understanding of modern art, the history of photography also illuminates fundamental aspects of the image-dominated culture in which we live. The course is broadly chronological, and includes the invention and early reception of photography, its function as an independent art form and its uses in other arts, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The first part of the course will look at the developments of the medium up to the modern era. Beginning with discoveries in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, illustrated lectures will trace the parallel development of artistic, commercial, scientific and social applications of photography. Attention will be paid to the relationship of creativity to technical innovation, especially in the early years in Europe and the US when photographers functioned simultaneously as artists, inventors and scientists.
The second part of the course will be directed towards the different “schools” of photography, which from the beginning of the twentieth century started to be clearly defined, from documentary to pictorial to commercial. Closer examination of works by individual photographers will be viewed through the themes or the theoretical issues that have emerged in recent scholarship and debates and will familiarize students with the seminal texts and debates photography today.
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
Course Outcomes/Objectives:
-Recognize key photographic processes from inception of the medium to the digital age.
-Develop an understanding of the chronology and development of photography.
-Identify historically important figures and iconic or exemplary photographs.
- Recognize and reason about the contributions of influential photographers on the medium’s development and its relation to modern art and theory.
-Exercise critical thinking while looking, reading, writing and speaking about photographers and photographic images.
-Identify, analyze and interpret significant aspects and themes in the history of photography within different social and historical contexts.
-Evaluate the ways that photography as a form of art and material culture, as well as the reception, presentation, and historical interpretation of these, are shaped by dynamic social and cultural interactions.
-Develop technical vocabulary appropriate to the field.
-Describe and visually analyze photographs in relationship to other genres including painting, film, video and contemporary mixed-media practices.
-Formulate and develop critical and rigorous arguments, especially in their essays and presentations; find and evaluate pertinent, high-quality sources and information.
-Structure and effectively communicate ideas and information orally and in writing; understand how to convey ideas and information visually.
-Develop an aptitude at visual analysis and the contextualization of works in different histories.
-Formulate an interpretative argument and draw out observations on the cultural outlook, norms and histories that influenced the production, creation and reception of the works under discussion.
TEXTBOOK:
Wells, Liz (ed.) Photography: A Critical Introduction (4th Edition) Routledge.
GRADING POLICY
-ASSESSMENT METHODS:
Assignment Guidelines Weight
1) Written essay of 2000 - 2500 words due week 14. Note that an outline and selection of images must be presented to the professor on week 10: 30%
2) Class presentation: Research presentation to class (10 minutes): 25%
Final examination in class (Definitions, image identifications, comparisons and brief analytical essays): 25%
3) Collaboration, attendance, and class participation Contribution to class discussions and reviews:10%
4) Reading assignments (in-class quizzes on required reading): 10%
5) Final examination in class (Definitions, image identifications, comparisons and brief analytical essays): 25%
Week 1.1: Course introduction and Histories of Photography (Part I)
Week 1.2: Histories of Photography (Part II)
Week 2.1: Photography between art and science: the emergence of a medium in the late-18th and early-19th centuries: from Nièpce to Talbot (part 1).
Week 2.2: Photography between art and science: the emergence of a medium in the late-18th and early-19th centuries: from Nièpce to Talbot (part 2).
Week 3.1: The question of optics: Muybridge and Marey
Week 3.2: Early photographic portraiture: Daguerre and the daguerrotype
Week 4.1: Early photographic landscape in Europe and the US
Week 4.2: Photography as an independent art: historical and critical issues
Week 5.1: The new medium between sketch and tool: Photography and Impressionism
Week 5.2: The new medium between motion and aestheticism (2): Pictorialist photography
Week 4.2: The Hand-held camera, the snapshot and the moving image
Week 5.1: Photography as a Social Document
Week 5.2: “Film und Foto” and the New Objectivity;
Week 6.1: Picturing the Surrealist Dream
Week 6.2: Photography of the Second World War and Documentary Photography
Week 7.1: Photography as Agent: Fashion, Advertising and popular culture
Week 7.2: Conceptualism
Week 8.1: Postmodernism in Photography (Part I): 1970s – 1990s
Week 8.2: Postmodernism in Photography (Part II): 1970s – 1990s
Week 9.1: Class Presentations (I of II)
Week 9.2: Class Presentations (II of II)
Week 10.1: Photography in today’s expanded field (Part I)
Week 10.2: Photography in today’s expanded field (Part II)
Week 11.1: Commercial photography today (guest lecture)
Week 11.2: Photography and the art market
Week 12.1: Photography and ephemeral artistic practices
Week 12.2: Photography as artists’ notes
Week 13.1: Photography and the archive
Week 13.2: The photography book
Week 14.1: Photography in the digital age
Week 14.2: Course Review
Week 15: Final Exam
Selected Bibliography
Textbook:
Liz Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction (4th Edition) Routledge (1st ed. 1996)
General:
- Mary Warner Marien. Photography: A Cultural History, Prentice Hall, 2010.
- Naomi Rosenblum. A World History of Photography. Abbeville Press, repr. 2008.
Photo Technology and Processes:
• Todd Gustavson. Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital. Sterling
Publishing, 2009.
- Sarah Kennel. In the Darkroom: An Illustrated Guide to Photographic Processes Before the Digital Age. National Gallery of Art, 2009.
Photo Terminology and Movements:
• Gordon Baldwin and Martin Jürgens, Looking at Photographs: A Guide to Technical Terms. Revised Edition. Getty Publications, 2009.
• Gilles Mora, PhotoSPEAK: A Guide to the Ideas, Movements, and Techniques of Photography, 1839 to the Present. Abbeville Press, 1998.
Important Collections of Writing on Photography:
• Nathan Lyons, ed., Photographers on Photography. Prentice-Hall, 1966.
• Alan Trachtenberg, ed. Classic Essays on Photography. Leete’s Island Books, 1980.
• Vicki Goldberg, ed. Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present. University of New
Mexico Press, 1981.
• Richard Bolton, ed. The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. MIT Press, 1992.
• Liz Heron and Val Williams, eds. Illuminations: Women Writing on Photography From the 1850s to the Present. Duke University Press, 1996.
• Liz Wells, ed. The Photography Reader. Routledge, 2003.
Critical Texts on Photography:
• Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. Hill and Wang, 2010 (first published in English in 1982).
• Susan Sontag, On Photography. Picador, 2001. (originally published 1977)
- John Berger, Ways of Seeing. Penguin 1990 (originally published 1972)
• Deborah Willis, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present. W.W.
Norton, 2002.
• Charlotte Cotton, The Photograph as Contemporary Art. Second Edition. Thames & Hudson, 2009.
• Fred Ritchin, After Photography. W.W. Norton, 2010.
- Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. Yale University Press, 2008.
- Ralph Lieberman “The Art-Historical Photograph as Fiction: The Pretense of Objectivity” (pp. 118-138), Fictions of Art History, Yale University Press (2013)
- Eduardo Cadava Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History, Princeton University Press (1997)
USEFUL WEBSITES:
Public and private organizations, museums and universities that have websites containing samples of their collections and exhibits online:
http://www.creativephotography.org/
The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona.
http://www.geh.org
George Eastman House, Rochester NY. Has a timeline of photography and is constantly enriched with new material. http://www.getty.edu
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, has a wonderful collection of optical devices and an archive of its 2002 exhibition called Devices of Wonder.
http://www.icp.org
The International Center for Photography, New York NY.
http://americanart.si.edu/research/programs/archive/
The Photograph Archives at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
http://www.loc.gov
The United States Library of Congress has a rich assortment of photographs displayed in its American Memory section, and frequently directs viewers to other themed sites where photographs can be found.
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/photographs
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY, has a rich collection of photographs.
http://www.mocp.org/
The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, Chicago.
http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/
Britain’s National Media Museum.
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/photo/photo.html
The New York Public Library photography collection.
http://www.photographymuseum.com/
The American Museum of Photography, a museum without walls.
http://photography.si.edu/
The Photography Initiative at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/Palmquist/
The Women in Photography International Archive.
http://lal.tulane.edu/collections/imagearchive
The Latin American photographic archive at Tulane University contains more than 55,000 images from every country in the region.
http://www.luminouslint.com
A website with wide-ranging information on historic and contemporary photography and useful timelines.
Websites concerning historical photographic techniques:
http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/
A website for those interested in contemporary and former uses of the cyanotype and other early photographic processes
http://www.daguerre.org/
The Daguerreian Society at Craig’s Daguerreian Registry is primarily a source for collectors but also supports a list of daguerreotypists.
http://www.stereoscopicsociety.org.uk/
The Stereoscopic Association.
http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/dagprocess.htm
The Daguerreotype Process (on Sussex photo history site)